Jenny Kush added to Arrest Angel wall of those killed by DUI drivers

It was one of the most sadly ironic events of the year: On Labor Day weekend -- when the heat was on to catch drunk drivers -- cannabis activist Jenny Kush was killed by one of those drink drivers, as related in our September cover story, "The life and tragic death of Jenny Kush."

Now her death has been added to Arrest Angel, a site that chronicles DUI deaths across the country, and asks drivers to "think twice" before driving drunk.

According to Arrest Angel's "think twice" page:

Every day in America, aproximately 25 people die as a result of drunk driving crashes. We would like to bring awareness to the world of the tragedies that effect everyone involve in a DUI. The bottom line is nothing good ever comes from drinking & driving. DUI Arrests and Deaths Ruin Lives..

According to the Colorado Department of Transportation, 1,321 people were arrested over a nineteen-day stretch between August 16 and September 3 of this year for suspected driving under the influence. One of them was 27-year-old Rebecca Maez, who was driving a borrowed vehicle the wrong way in an HOV lane on I-25 when she crashed into the car driven by Jenny Kush's boyfriend.

As part of his reporting on the story, William Breathes tried to break down the 1,342 DUI arrests into those drivers pulled over for driving under the influence of alcohol, and those who were under the influence of marijuana. It proved to be a trickier task than he'd thought, as he detailed in a follow-up story, "Under the Influence."

*An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Maez's court date.

Patricia Calhoun co-founded Westword, Denver’s News and Arts weekly, in 1977; she’s been the editor there ever since. She’s a regular on the weekly Colorado Public Television roundtable Colorado Inside Out, the former president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies -- a post that got her an unexpected interview with former President Bill Clinton in front of a thousand people (while she was in flip-flops) -- and played a real journalist in John Sayles’s Silver City.